No fewer than one million people in northeast Nigeria may lose access to emergency food and nutrition assistance within weeks unless urgent funding is secured, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has warned.
In a statement released on Thursday, the WFP said Nigeria is facing one of its worst hunger crises in recent times, driven by renewed violence, displacement, and the destruction of livelihoods across the northern region.
The agency disclosed that escalating insecurity has forced it to drastically reduce food assistance, cutting beneficiaries from about 1.3 million people to just 72,000.
According to the WFP, failure to sustain support for displaced persons in camps could have grave consequences. “If WFP cannot continue supporting displaced populations, they may leave camps in a desperate attempt to survive, migrate elsewhere, or be forced to join insurgent groups to feed themselves and their families,” the WFP’s Nigeria Country Director, David Stevenson, said.
The organisation further revealed that nearly 35 million Nigerians are projected to face acute and severe food insecurity during the coming lean season. Of this number, about 15,000 people in Borno State are at risk of catastrophic hunger, just one step away from famine.
The WFP noted that the crisis is unfolding amid renewed attacks that have devastated rural communities, displaced families, and destroyed food reserves.
“Now is not the time to stop food assistance,” Stevenson said, warning that further cuts could trigger catastrophic humanitarian, security, and economic consequences, including mass displacement and regional instability.
The agency described the situation as the worst level of hunger recorded in Nigeria in the past decade. It added that it urgently requires $129 million to sustain its operations in northeast Nigeria over the next six months, cautioning that its activities could shut down entirely if the funds are not received.
